In her new-found enthusiasm for the Hebrew language she translated much from the medieval poets. But she will always come to one’s mind as the bard of Hanukkah. There she comes nearest to the Idea of which Israel is the missioner. Cheyne, in one of his finest works (_The Origin and Religious Contents of the Psalter_, pp. 18, 104), quotes two stanzas from her _Feast of Lights_ as an apt commentary on Psalms 79 and 118, contrasting the desolation of Zion and the re-dedication: They who had camped within the mountain-pass, Couched on the rock, and tented ’neath the sky, Who saw from Mizpah’s heights the tangled grass Choke the wide Temple-courts, the altar lie Disfigured and polluted--who had flung Their faces on the stones, and mourned aloud And rent their garments, wailing with one tongue, Crushed as a wind-swept bed of reeds is bowed, Even they by one voice fired, one heart of flame, Though broken reeds, had risen, and were men, They rushed upon the spoiler and o’ercame, Each arm for freedom had the strength of ten. Now is their mourning into dancing turned, Their sackcloth doffed for garments of delight, Week-long the festive torches shall be burned, Music and revelry wed day with night. One could quote much else from Emma Lazarus; her pagan poems written under classic and romantic influences; her renderings of Heine; her historical tragedy, the _Dance of Death_, dedicated to George Eliot; her prose epistles, in one of which occurs her famous use of a Hebrew grammatical form. In the Hebrew verb there is an _intensive_ voice, and so the Jews are the _intensive_ form of any nationality whose language and customs they adopt. Or again, one might cite her _New Ezekiel_, her _Bar Kochba_, her _Talmud Legends_, her _Rashi in Prague_, or, better still, her lines from Nahum’s Spring Song: Now the dreary winter’s over, Fled with him are grief and pain; When the trees their bloom recover, Then the soul is born again! But her hand is always firmest when her theme is the Maccabæan heroism. This subject gave her the opportunity which her nationalistic mood needed. We have read part of one of her poems on the subject, let us read another in full, though it is perhaps the most familiar of her compositions. Its title is “The Banner of the Jew.” While it repeats the thought and almost the phrases of the _Feast of Lights_, it has more of the lyric lightness of touch. It runs thus: Wake, Israel, wake! Recall to-day The glorious Maccabean rage, The sire heroic, hoary-gray, His five-fold lion-lineage: The Wise, the Elect, the Help-of-God, The Burst-of-Spring, the Avenging Rod. From Mizpeh’s mountain-ridge they saw Jerusalem’s empty streets, her shrine Laid waste where Greeks profaned the Law, With idol and with pagan sign. Mourners in tattered black were there, With ashes sprinkled on their hair.